I just don't understand why BB didn't use his timeouts during the last Washington drive. Washington had first and goal with about 1.5 minutes left. They can run 4 plays at most, which kills the clock. Use the timeouts before they can kill the clock! If they score, you'll at least have a chance to mount a comeback.

If it were me, I would have used the timeouts much earlier, before the two-minute warning. I just don't understand why you would save timeouts in situations like these. If you don't use them, you'll have so little time you won't be able to get many plays off. If you use the time outs, you'll at least have more time with which to work. Get out of bounds, hurry up, spike the ball, etc can all be used to slow the clock even without timeouts.

Clock mgt. was fine. You never want to stop the clock when you lead by seven or more.

All kinds of things could have happened. As it was, the 'Skins had very little time when they turned it over. What if P/I was called, and they got a new set of downs. Do you want them to have the ball on the five, on first down, with no T/Os left, and 98 seconds left or 38 seconds left?

With 38 seconds, they are forced to pass on some of those plays if they can't run it in on the first two tries. With 98 seconds, they can pick any plays for all four downs if they hurry.

I was thinking when the PAts had the ball in the red zone (before the int) , hmm what is better here, lots of time off the clock and a FG or just get a TD...I came to the conclusion that the time off the clock and the FG was much better in this situation but did not for a second think of the third option..throwing an int.

Wouldn't it have been better if Brady just didn't throw another bad ball and toss an INT in the end zone?Posted by RidingWithTheKingII

Yes it would have and that's another part of the clock management. Running the ball 3 times instead of throwing it on that last drive is another way of clock management

On the Skins drive though. I've heard it argue that they wanted to add additional pressure to Grossman and BB didn't want the Skins to react to the D he would put out after the TO's. To that I call BS. In that drive the D couldn't stop Grossman at all. He was having his way with the D so obviously the pressure wasn't getting to him driving 70yrds down the field. Calling a TO might have actually affected him more because it would have given him time to think instead of just marching down the field. As with BB and not giving the Skins a chance to match his D well again the Skins had no issue marching down field with his current package on the field. I think BB was just covering his butt for bad clock management down the stretch and got lucky that Moss basically flipped it right to Mayo. If the Skins had scored and left no time on the clock it would have been talked about endlessly today. This wasn't a int where the defender baited the QB or even the pressure caused a bad throw this was just one of those random fluky ints that Mayo happened to be in the right place at the right time

Wouldn't it have been better if Brady just didn't throw another bad ball and toss an INT in the end zone?Posted by RidingWithTheKingII

Or if Welker caught that ball and walked into the endzone to bury that game. That was a poor throw by Brady but Wes still should have made the grab. Gotta execute better in the redzone. 2 dropped touchdowns isn't going to cut it come playoff time. See: Alge Crumpler, 2010 playoffs

I just don't understand why BB didn't use his timeouts during the last Washington drive. Washington had first and goal with about 1.5 minutes left. They can run 4 plays at most, which kills the clock. Use the timeouts before they can kill the clock! If they score, you'll at least have a chance to mount a comeback. If it were me, I would have used the timeouts much earlier, before the two-minute warning. I just don't understand why you would save timeouts in situations like these. If you don't use them, you'll have so little time you won't be able to get many plays off. If you use the time outs, you'll at least have more time with which to work. Get out of bounds, hurry up, spike the ball, etc can all be used to slow the clock even without timeouts. Posted by devault

Why would they take timeouts and give the Redskins more time to draw up a play? Why would a head coach worry about mounting a comeback when the team is up by a touchdown. As a coach you have to assume your team can come up with a stop, no matter how bad they may be playing.

In Response to Re: Idiotic clock management : Are you expecting great D from Slater, an injured McCourty and Edelman? Look, I don't have nary a clue why Slater is at Safety other than Nate JOnes is new and maybe can;'t be trusted, etc, but acting like this is what the D will be like in January is just being over the top. We also got blasted again with TOP, partially due to the D's fault and partially due to a crappy offense with no real momentum at times. Translation? The D is in worse shape than our offense from a personnel standpoint. I don't really see these facts as BS. It's just the truth. If we are seeing some poor performances down the stretch with Chung and Spikes back, with a 4-3 Under D, then yeah, I am right there with you. And I don't excuse some of the poor plays on D either. They were poor at times. I'd like to see McCOurty ride the pine a bit here down the stretch until he can prove he's healthy and performing up to par.Posted by RidingWithTheKingII

King other then Chung I'd say that Slater's been our best S this year. You don't find that sad in the least bit?

Edelman's actually been one of our best CB's too. Blame injures all you want but those who are currently hurt, I'm not sure how much they'd improve the team that much if they were healthy.

Add Chung and Spikes how much does that improve the secondary honestly? Spikes is great against the run and will get some pressure on QB's with stints but does he make an immediate impact on the pass defense? Chung, when he was in the starting rotation our secondary was better, this can't be debated but how much better were they honestly? There were less players breaking out of tackles for big gains, that's for sure but they were still catching balls a majority of the time. What Chung primely brings is the ability to cover TE's that our LB's don't provide and to stop plays in front of him with solid tackling. But, neither really prevents the catches just limits the damage.

If you think the secondary is going to drastically improve with just the addition of Chung and Spikes then I think you are reaching here.

Now, with the injury situation the Pats put themselves in this position to begin with. I won't blame injures if the players that are injured aren't very good to begin with. We always point to the depth of the Pats and how we use to just plug players in because we had great depth well lets examine that for a second. Brown, Barrett, Inhedigbo would you say anyone of them were critical loses when they were/get injured? They have such a low impact that Slater is a better S and Jones provided just as much as any of them off the street.

With McCourty he wasn't playing great before the injury so don't blame the injury on his poor performance. That's a cop out at this point. Then they were counting on Ras in pre-season to be a starter. Ras was known to have a rash of injures in college to his lower body. If you are counting on him being a starter you better have good depth behind him, they didn't provide that depth and the worst case happened.

This past off-season they should have known what we all saw at practice, that this secondary wasn't improving and the players they kept were a major gamble. That's one thing I hold against BB is that he has this notion that he can take anyone's cast off and turn them into starters. Well that's proven to not be true. We are in this situation because he wouldn't spend a little extra money to sign a S like Goldson or to go out and get decent CB depth instead of the UDFA or other teams cast-offs.

Now they can still improve but unless it's a drastic improvement between now and the playoffs I don't know if we can bet a team with a good O unless our O is perfect.

The D usually gives up around 20 points per game. Yes, I think they'd be better than 27 allowed or 24 allowed the week prior if CHung and Spikes were here or NE wasn't fiddling with a prevent D or starting WRs in the secondary. Shoot me for thinking that. lol Our O doesn't need to be perfect at all, which just need to stop telling Ds that we pass the ball only. Agree on McCourty, however I am not naive enough to think he;s a bad player due to a down year battling injuries (possible groin and now shoulder). I saq 14+ games of All Pro play as a rookie so I know he's legit. Not this year, but overall he's the real deal. I'd just start Molden over McCourty so we at least know we have a stable alternative there. He's played well.Posted by RidingWithTheKingII

King would they have given up less then 27 or 24 maybe. But, how much less. If they average 20 points a game you must figure that they will play 2-3 of the better O's in the league and 2-3 of the worst O's in the league with a whole bunch of average O's every year. If you figure the best O's will most likely put up between 25-35 points against this D then the bad O's need to put up less then 15 just to balance it out. The Colts and the Skins are two of the worst O's in the league and they both put together significant drives and had more 8+ drives then 6- drives.

They weren't in prevent against the Colts in the 4th btw. They were stilling pressing the line and playing man not their soft zone prevent.

Molden has been a surprise. He'd be a 4/5th CB on most teams any given year but this year he's played as a #3 CB but not a starting caliber CB. If you are banking on a situational backup CB to be one of your starters then you're in trouble

McCourty I hope is having a sophomore slump but as of right now it's his technic that's hurting him not the ability to stay with WR's. Technic is one thing that scares me that can't be over come. Much like Butler but I'm hoping for a rebound year

I agree with Woody regarding clock management at the end of the game. Ticking clock puts more pressure on the opposing QB. I do not agree with not calling a timeout before the half. Brady hurried throw and there was only 1 sec left to kick a FG. Just stupid. Also completely disagree with playcalling on the Pats last drive. Run the ball, eat the clock, kick a FG and the game is over. Are they just trying to make things more interesting? Same with the Buffalo game when the coaches refused to play it safe and just kick a FG before the half.

We ate a time out in the first half and were just lucky that we had asecond left to kick the field goal. At the end of the game we had 3 time-outs left and the Skins were deliberately letting the clock run down. What would we have done if the Skins scored and successfully went for two after the TD? The Skins were 4-8 and had absolutely nothing to lose. With no time left we would have been totally screwed. Even if they had played for the tie and OT, would anyone out there have felt confident with our defense managing a 3 and out? If we had used our time-outs we still would have had over a minute left and we would have been down one at worst. The issue of this post was clock management, not whether Brady should have thrown the ball in the stands on 3rd and goal, and it looked to me as is the Patriots were clueless.

We ate a time out in the first half and were just lucky that we had asecond left to kick the field goal. At the end of the game we had 3 time-outs left and the Skins were deliberately letting the clock run down. What would we have done if the Skins scored and successfully went for two after the TD? The Skins were 4-8 and had absolutely nothing to lose. With no time left we would have been totally screwed. Even if they had played for the tie and OT, would anyone out there have felt confident with our defense managing a 3 and out? If we had used our time-outs we still would have had over a minute left and we would have been down one at worst. The issue of this post was clock management, not whether Brady should have thrown the ball in the stands on 3rd and goal, and it lokked to me as is the Patriots were clueless.Posted by trouts

Geez, finally someone gets it. I started a thread about this yeaterday. I love BB, but not using these three timeouts could have been a HUGE mistake. BEFORE the PI call, Wash had 2nd down on the 5 yd line with 1:50 left, and we just let the clock keep running. If Wash wanted to draw up a play for Grossman they could've used their own timeout. But why would they? They were going through us like a warm knife through butter. A couple of more run plays and a two point conversion and we're behind by one point and probably less than 30 seconds for TB to drive down for a fg. However using the timeouts lets our defense get settled if need be and we get the ball back with about a minute and a half. More than enough time for Brady to do his magic.

I agree! Why not one reporter asked the Hooded One this question is mind boggling? Had the Skins scored,(very probable with this D), the Pats would have had 1:30 minutes left for Brady to get a field goal. Why the coaching staff would leave all 3 timeouts left when the Skins were in 1st and GOAL-baffles me? Very poor clock management!!!!!In Response to Idiotic clock management:

I just don't understand why BB didn't use his timeouts during the last Washington drive. Washington had first and goal with about 1.5 minutes left. They can run 4 plays at most, which kills the clock. Use the timeouts before they can kill the clock! If they score, you'll at least have a chance to mount a comeback. If it were me, I would have used the timeouts much earlier, before the two-minute warning. I just don't understand why you would save timeouts in situations like these. If you don't use them, you'll have so little time you won't be able to get many plays off. If you use the time outs, you'll at least have more time with which to work. Get out of bounds, hurry up, spike the ball, etc can all be used to slow the clock even without timeouts. Posted by devault

Another stupid response! If the Skins had scored there was going to be about 15 seconds left-clearly not enough to mount a drive for field goal-which would have created a coin toss. And if the skins won that toss I believe there was a good chance against this D of the Pats that the Skins drive down for a field goal. You tell me you wouldn't want Brady to have 1:30 minutes left to drive down for the winning 3 points-Give me a break- the poster is 100% correct in stating poor clock management!!!!! Clowns all around!In Response to Re: Idiotic clock management:

Clock mgt. was fine. You never want to stop the clock when you lead by seven or more. All kinds of things could have happened. As it was, the 'Skins had very little time when they turned it over. What if P/I was called, and they got a new set of downs. Do you want them to have the ball on the five, on first down, with no T/Os left, and 98 seconds left or 38 seconds left? With 38 seconds, they are forced to pass on some of those plays if they can't run it in on the first two tries. With 98 seconds, they can pick any plays for all four downs if they hurry.Posted by chrisakawoody